Wishes Can Come True!
Posted in Watkins Business by Eldon on January 29th, 2007 There’s a story about a study done at Yale University in 1953 of the graduating seniors and they found that only 3% of them had clear and specific, written down goals for their futures. Twenty years later, they did a survey of those same graduated seniors and found that the 3% who had the written goals were worth more, financially, than the other 97% combined!
You’ll hear this story from many big name speakers. But it’s also said to be a myth - it never happened. True or not, the moral of the story is important and that’s that most people don’t set goals and the ones that do, will do better.
When someone starts talking about goals, my eyes start to glaze over and I just want to change the subject. It’s not that I don’t set goals, or don’t think they’re important - I do! I’m totally convinced that to succeed, you have to have very specific goals with specific dates and tasks in order to succeed, but somehow the subject always bores me. I think it’s the term “GOAL”.
I’ve found a new way to think about goals. A goal is a WISH. A strong wish.
I wish I didn’t have to work a job every day.
I wish I could spend more time with my family.
I wish I could travel and not have to worry about time or money.
I wish we could just pay all the bills when they come in and not have to juggle money.
That kind of thing is a wish - and also a goal!
Let’s call them wishes from here on out. How would you like to make your wishes come true?
Let’s say one of your wishes is to have a nice vegetable garden in the back yard with tomatoes and peppers. That’s a nice wish, don’t you think? If you go sit down on your back lawn and wish real hard, will you get those tomatoes and peppers? Of course not.
You first have to say, “I need to plant some seeds!” Okay, to get tomatoes and peppers growing I’ll need to:
a. Find some seeds
b. Buy the seeds
c. Find a sunny spot
d. Clear the grass from the garden
e. Plant the seeds
f. Water garden daily
Write these things down somewhere where you won’t lose them - like in your Franklin Planner which both Jan and I use.
But if you have that wish and write that list down, it is still likely still not going to happen. You know why? There’s no slot in your life, slot in time, that you’ve fit it into. You need to give it a time slot:
a. Saturday, right after breakfast, go to the Nursery for seeds - ask someone to help me find the right seeds.
b. When I get back, check where the sun is shining in the yard and mark it.
c. After dinner, check again where the sun is shining and mark it.
d. Sunday, right after breakfast, clear the grass in the sunniest place and plant the seeds.
e. Each day as soon as I get home from work, go water the garden.
NOW, it’s quite likely to happen! You just have to have this written down somewhere that won’t allow you to forget it after breakfast on Saturday. For that, check out the next article below!
Now, let’s translate that to a less physical wish which can be a little more difficult. I wish I was making enough money with my Watkins business that I could pay my car payment every month with it. Again, wishing really hard is not going to make it happen.
So first determine specifics and what you need to make it. Say you decide that you need to do X dollars of personal sales each month and you need 25 associates in your group to pay your car payment. (You can add $30-$50 to your income that you’ll save on your budget by using Watkins products at home). To accomplish that, I need to:
a. Watkinize my home to save about $40 per month
b. Share catalogs with people at work and neighbors
c. Find some prospects for the business
d. Sponsor them
e. Train them
Again, you have to give them time slots or it won’t happen. Here’s an example of what it might look like:
a. On the 15th and 30th of each month, get out the grocery list and order my own Watkins products.
b. On the 10th and the 25th of each month, take catalogs to friends and collect orders to add to your own order.
c. Invest in 1-2 shares in every co-op with the money I make from my retail sales or other sources.
d. Call my Watkins manager every Saturday after lunch to get training on sponsoring and other stuff.
e. Call each prospect the day they show up.
f. Schedule a training with each new associate when they sign up and get help from my Watkins Manager on training them.
g. Make sure I sponsor at least 2 people every month, no matter what.
h. After 3 months, have 10 people in my group with at least 2 from downline sponsoring.
i. In 6 months, have 25 people in my group and an income paying my car payment.
According to Zig Ziglar, one of the major reasons people don’t set goals is because there’s a risk involved. What if you don’t make it? What if you said you’re going to do and you didn’t make it? One thing for sure - if you don’t try, you definitely won’t make it. Don’t let the fear of goals/wishes stop you from setting them and making them!
Make the wish and then COMMIT to making it. Commitment means that you’ll do it no matter what. This decision to commit will make the difference between making the wish come true and just having wished for something but not doing what it takes to do it.
Thanks to Randy & Jan Robinson, Watkins Executives, for providing this article!
Eldon Beard is a Watkins Manager with Associates All Across the USA and Canada
